To Be Julia Or Not To Be Julia? That Is the Question

This morning the Obama campaign unveiled The Life of Julia, a slide show that purports to illustrate how the Obama administration helps a woman named Julia from cradle to grave, at each stage of her life. Here is the first slide:

Julia is a classic Democratic voter; she wouldn’t know what to do with herself without the government. Conservatives had a field day today, teeing off on “Julia.” You can read a lot of the snark, much of it funny and telling, on Twitter. Michelle Malkin had several tweets, including this one:

The RNC put out a piece titled #Julia and the Obama Economy, which itemized various ways in which “Julias” of various ages are being harmed by the awful economy over which Obama had presided. At The Corner, Kevin Williamson similarly itemizes the devastation that the Obama economy has wrought on women, while Yuval Levin finds “Julia” to be such a ripe object for parody that it likely will damage Obama’s cause.

“The Life of Julia” is, of course, another of the Democrats’ never-ending efforts to lock up the “women’s vote.” But that is a misnomer: what the Democrats really dominate is the single women’s vote. Single women do vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Why? Because they worry that they may need to fall back on the government for security. Married women, on the other hand, change their priorities: their first object is their family’s well-being, and most of them consequently vote Republican. Notice that at no time in “Julia’s” life is she ever said to have a husband.

In a sense, I think that the Democrats’ crude slide show and the conservatives who mock it are ships passing in the night. Sure, “Julia” validates everything Mitt Romney says about Obama’s vision of a government-centered society. Sure, as conservatives tweeted, “Julia” depicts Americans as helpless losers who can’t do a thing without a government handout. But the sad truth is that the Democrats know their audience. There are a great many Americans, most but by no means all of them women, who evidently are not embarrassed by the fact that their life plan consists of using government to get their hands on someone else’s money. What conservatives see as the life of a pathetic loser, Democratic voters see as a heck of a good deal.

This post included a video of an exchange between Mitt Romney and an Illinois voter who said:

So you’re all for like, ‘yay, freedom,’ and all this stuff. And ‘yay, like pursuit of happiness.’ You know what would make me happy? Free birth control.

Romney’s response was principled:

You want free stuff? Vote for the other guy.

In this election, the lines couldn’t be more clearly drawn. The Democrats are the party of free stuff. Well, not actually free of course, but taxed away from someone who earned it or borrowed from our children. History does not give us great assurance that in the battle between freedom and progress on one side, and dependence and decline on the other, freedom and progress will win. We will have a better idea which way that epic struggle is going after November.